


Contraceptive

by blythechild



Series: Drabble Challenges [1]
Category: V for Vendetta (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Family, Children, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blythechild/pseuds/blythechild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>V and Evey have things to discuss after the birth of their latest child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contraceptive

**Author's Note:**

> Another drabble challenge fic based on the prompt 'contraceptive'.
> 
> This is a work of fanfiction and as such I do not claim ownership over any characters herein. It was created as a personal entertainment.

V held the newborn child in his arms.

“Contraceptives.” He muttered gloomily.

That was what Evey had shrieked out at the top of her lungs over and over as the contractions had increased in their intensity. V looked at her now – wrung out and exhausted – sleeping in their four-poster bed. The birth had been routine. After the complications that Evey had had with their first child, Vincent, V always worried about what would happen to her in each subsequent childbirth. But his fourth child, another daughter, had made a quick and easy entrance into the world, which is not to say that Evey thought that it was easy at all. After four children, she had clearly had enough of ‘birthin’ babies’ and that desire had made itself heard loudly and clearly this evening.

Contraceptives.

V looked down again into his sleeping daughter’s face and sighed. She was perfect: her skin a rich bronzed brown and a full head of downy-soft, unruly auburn hair. She would look most like Vincent as she grew, but also bear a resemblance to her sisters Lainey and Quehn in her delicate features – so like her mother’s. If she was to be the last child that he and Evey were to have, at least they made a good job of it, V mused as he softly sniffed the top of his daughter’s head. Selfishly, he had wanted as many children as they could manage. He never tired of them: watching them grow and learn and change. He saw aspects of both him and Evey in each of them, but also marveled at how they were each their own person as well. He loved them when they were small and breakable; when their bones were soft and one could lose oneself in the tiny miracles of their fingernails and eyelashes. He loved them as toddlers when they ran roughshod over every danger and got themselves into impossible messes. He loved them as they developed into beings that questioned everything, never being put off or satisfied by a ‘because I said so’. He wondered if he would love them as teenagers – did anyone love teenagers? Would he love them as they moved off into the world determined to make their own lives without him? He sighed again.

“Well, at least I have some time to get used to the idea with you, don’t I, blossom?” he whispered.

“Blossom?” A voice croaked from the bed.

“Just an endearment, my love.” V looked over at Evey, her tousled hair spread across the pillows. “I haven’t named her – that is _your_ province, after all. I am waiting with baited breath on your latest selection.”

Evey caught the sarcasm in his voice and shot him a look that he knew well. He walked towards the bed, chuckling lightly, knowing that in her current state she was in no position to follow through on it. He sat down next to her and raised their baby upward so that Evey could see her without straining.

“She’s … perfect.” She murmured.

“Yes, she is.” V said warmly as he stared at Evey.

Their eyes met and he saw how the sleeping child had melted her heart. Evey adored all of her children, but the secret truth that all parents learn is that you develop favorites. This child, being the last one, was in danger of ensorcelling both of them.

“So, what’s it to be?” said V.

“Pardon?”

“Her name, dearest… we can’t call her ‘it’.” He faked a look of alarm at his lover. “Please tell me that we’re _not_ calling her ‘it’…”

“Funny man mocking the poor, exhausted woman who has just pushed out her fourth baby…” Evey cocked an eyebrow at him and smirked a little.

“Mockage? I wouldn’t dream of it, my angel.” He scooted up the bed closer to her and leaned in, with the babe still sleeping in his arms, to give her a lingering kiss.

“I value my manhood too much.” He concluded with a smile as he hovered above her lips.

“Clearly, I value your manhood as well, which has led us to four children…” She smiled back.

V smiled and cleared his throat. Though she could never tell by his complexion, she knew from his movements that she had embarrassed him, just as she knew that he had been affronted by her declaration during her labor pains. This pregnancy had been the easiest of the four, but despite that she was utterly exhausted by the whole process – not just the delivery. She felt that at 35, she needed a little time to breathe. She wanted more children with V, but she also wanted to have the energy to pursue her own ambitions. The children, and the process of having them, was taking all that she had and leaving nothing in reserve – surely V would have to understand that. 

“Well, I, umm, I heard what you said during labor – I’m sure that the whole neighborhood heard it too -” V stumbled “Four children is more than enough for any family… I would not ask for anymore.”

He was sinking under the weight of his own inarticulateness that only happened when he was deeply upset. Evey reached out her hand and touched his lips to silence him. This was not what she wanted from him.

“I just need a few years for myself and my own dreams, V. I’m not tired of being a mother, and I will never tire of you. I just want the chance to make something of myself – besides motherhood - for my own peace of mind.” She cupped his face in both hands and turned it slightly to face hers. “I promise you another child, V. I promise you one more.”

V’s face slowly lightened as the words sunk in.

“Really?”

“How could I deny you? They have changed you, and I know how much this family means to you. Neither one of us came from places of love or kindness, but we haven’t let that come between our children and us. They are wonderful and happy. I have never regretted a moment with them, and it fills me with pleasure to know that together, we created that joy. It’s quite an accomplishment in and of itself.”

Evey reached down and gently stroked her daughter’s feather-soft hair, as she lay snuggled between them. When she looked back into his eyes, they were rimmed with tears.

“You gave me purpose, V. I gave you the children, and the children revived you. It has the symmetry of a balanced equation about it.”

“I never expected any of this, Evey – it was more than I could have hoped for.” He whispered as he kissed her forehead. “Four is enough.”

“I want one more, V – in a few years.”

“Okay, my love, okay.” Relief and joy bubbled within him.

“Viola.” Evey said as she leaned back into the pillows with a wince.

“I’m sorry?”

“Let’s call her Viola.”

“But, I’ve always considered _you_ to be my Viola, darling…” V said hesitantly.

“I already have a name.” Evey winked at him. “She doesn’t. Besides, she has untold depths – I can feel it - and she needs a name to match that. Mother’s intuition.”

“Viola?” V looked upon his daughter and tried the name on for size.

Viola yawned and blinked up at her father for the briefest of moments before settling again into his embrace, flexing the tiny fingers of one hand as she did so. V let out a laugh against his will: another woman that had captured his heart in an instant. 

“Yes: Viola.” He said finally, looking back at Evey. “It is a good name. Quehn will be disappointed though.”

“Why?” asked Evey.

“She wanted to name the baby Boba Fett.”

Evey gave him a curious look.

“Vincent let her watch the _Star Wars_ trilogy and she’s become obsessed with the bounty hunter character.” V shrugged his shoulders as if the situation was inevitable.

“You mean she’s fallen for a vigilante who operates above the law? Gee, I wonder where that came from…” Evey smiled and yawned.

“Her mother, I expect…” V said trying to keep as straight a face as possible.

“Her mother had help from a smooth-talking devil.” Evey mumbled as exhaustion overtook her once more.

V rose and tucked Evey in with his free hand, then brushed her hair away from her face with light strokes of his fingers. She murmured at his touch, as she always did no matter how tired she was, and then settled into a deep sleep that mirrored her newborn daughter’s. V looked down on her with unrestrained pleasure.

“This smooth-talking devil didn’t stand a chance against your wily charms, Madame.” He whispered.

After a moment, he returned from his revelry and looked down at Viola. He lightly traced the outline of her chubby cheek with the tip of his callused finger, and found himself clucking at her. One of Viola’s tiny hands bumped into his finger and clutched at it reflexively; its newborn tenacity confirming her mother’s prediction. Something within him turned liquid and golden and warm at the thought of the power residing inside this tiny being. Slowly he turned and walked towards the bedroom door.

“Come, sweet Viola. Let us take you to meet the rest of the brood.”


End file.
